Been on a long hiatus, but I'm back!
What does this blog cover? Whatever I'm currently interested in. I started this blog almost a year ago to track what I was learning while I was teaching myself how to program an Arduino and play around with a 4x4x4 LED cube. Now, almost a year later I'm in the middle of researching and building a Reprap Prusa Mendel 3D printer so who knows where a 3D printer will lead me next, hopefully something as equally amazing.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Oscilloscopes and Arduino's

ARM Oscilloscope DSO-201 Nano (Mini 2.8in) Digital Oscilloscope

I was looking at digital oscilloscopes and kept seeing these really inexpensive (around $70) DSO-201 units showing up all over ebay. I've only run into one problem so far in the last year where an oscilloscope would have helped me and it was a simple beginner mistake of not taking a tact switch's debounce into account while setting up the sampling rate. A quick google search of my problem brought up tons of pages of people running into the same problem and their solutions so it was easy enough to fix. Still, as I get deeper into building electronics it might be another helpful skill to have. I tried doing a google search for oscilloscope arduino and found Accrochages webpage about using an Arduino to create a very limited, low end oscilloscope with similar capabilities as the DSO-201. So I guess I have another project to build one of these evenings. Good thing I just bought a bunch of super cheap Chinese Arduino UNO's.

I figure building a really simple oscilloscope with an Arduino will let me learn the basics of how to use one. Plus if it does turn out to be useful I'll probably have a better idea of what kind of specs I'll need as there seems to be a big price difference depending on the sampling rate and number of inputs it has. Although in the $400 price range they start to come with a few more bells and whistles. Seems like that might be around the price range if I wanted one that would give me a little room to grow into it as I keep building bigger and ever more complicated circuits.

The deeper I get into electronics the more I realize I need to understand the basics of operating an oscilloscope and how to use it to trouble shoot and analyze circuits.

BTW, scientechworld looks like a pretty cool Indian company that manufactures all kinds of industrial tech goods. I was drooling over the PCB Fabrication systems you guys offer, I've now got another thing to add to my wish list of things I can probably never afford, but would love to have.